June 30, 2005

After a brief flirtation with the language of recovery and the ideology of therapism, business executives are returning to the very old-fashioned language of heroism. In their speeches, articles, books, annual reports, testimony and blogs, business leaders have ditched the terminology of pain, healing, self-esteem, personal growth.

Instead they're beginning to talk again the tough yet lofty language of the heroic. And, no wonder.

June 29, 2005

Way back in the relatively calm early 1980s, the irony of planning "all the right moves" was played out in a movie by that title. Now that the world has morphed into chaos, you'd assume strivers would have simply stopped this right-move nonsense. Not by a long shot.

June 28, 2005

Being an outsider could be morphing into the new brand of success. After all, the Establishment of insiders isn't faring all that well in this upside-down economy.

It's now old news that few of establishment offspring are becoming self-supporting. And the new news every day is that another established figure who knows no other way but thinking in-the-box got the ax.

June 27, 2005

Okay, you've heard it before, that there's a New Establishment, a New Set of Power Brokers, New Influentials who are scaring to death the present Power Structure. And yet, the old-line guys and girls, ranging from the George W. Bushs to the Maria Shrivers always seem to hold on.

June 26, 2005

At the age of 50, Dominick Dunne put together a roaring comeback by drilling down to the hustler who had always been there inside him. The trick is, how can the rest of us who've fallen from professional grace find and nourish our inner hustler?

An upper middle class kid who married money and fell into a Hollywood career, Dunne hadn't had to rely much on drive. Then, arrogance, booze, drugs, a changing Hollywood snatched it all away.

June 25, 2005

The Robert Scoble Brand just increased in value. That boost came through Scoble's apology about defending the Chinese MSN word blocker.

Apology or mea culpa has become the totally disarming way to achieve everything from enhancing brand identity to retaining customers. At least in blogosphere. Actually, before citizen journalism, turnaround expert Lee Iacocca used the mea culpa tactic brilliantly.

June 24, 2005

Career experts ranging from Harvey McKay to Randall S. Hansen are positioning losing a job as, to quote Hansen, "an opportunity for change and growth." And, getting fired can prove to be just that.

After getting the ax, men and women have started successful businesses, shifted careers, redefined their personal brand to get a much better job and enhanced their quality of life through values transformation.

June 22, 2005

Today, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ran another installment in its series about how the American Dream is stalling out "as the economy shifts." There are sadsack stories about folks like Ron Larson and his wife Kathy who are barely surviving economically.

Well, the Larsons could have been my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles. The difference is that my family did better than scrape by.

June 21, 2005

Last Sunday, in a radio interview about executive communications I was asked the fashionable question, why do so many once-successful business leaders wind up failing? The producer was especially interested in why and how Lee Iacocca, whom I had written for the 1980s, imploded so royally.

June 20, 2005

Thirteen positive, some downright glowing, responses came in to me and the print publication's editor about an article I wrote. One critical one also came in. I reflected on the critical one at length. Both because it took be aback (especially its sarcasm) and because I got to wondering, is there something inherently wrong with criticism?

In education, work life, psychotherapy, criticism is positioned as a necessary and useful tool.